Today, I'm going to be doing a review on the Ruideng/Riden RD6006 variable power supply. Ruideng/Riden sent me this for review, and I've had it for about 2 weeks to test it out. So, without further delay, here's the review! The power supply comes in a nice box, along with some accessories and spare parts. There is also a case which you can buy for the power supply separately. You have to assemble the case yourself, with the hardware that comes with it. Along with the power supply and case, you have to buy the 60V 6.7A DC power supply, so you can power the RD6006 from 120/220V. Here is the power supply partially assembled. The power supply fully assembled. The top cover just needs to be put on. The front panel of the assembled power supply. The power supply powered on for the first time! Luckily, there is no magic smoke. One of the most noteworthy features of this power supply is the battery charging function. If you plug the positive wire into the green battery charging port, it will read the voltage of the battery, and cut the charging process off when the voltage reaches the charging voltage you set. I'm using it in this picture to charge my 12V 10Ah Li-Ion battery. The power supply can put out 62V at 6.2A on maximum power. It also has a handy watt meter to show how much power you are using in watts. Here, you can see that the output voltage is spot on, down to a hundredth of a volt. Here you can see the positive and negative binding posts, along with the green battery charging terminal. Pros, Cons, and Final ThoughtsNow that I've shown you the process of assembling the power supply, and some of the features, here are the pros, cons, and final thoughts of this power supply.
Pros: - Nice color LCD screen - Integrated battery charging function - Easy to assemble (no soldering) - Accurate voltage within 0.01V - Powerful (62V 6.2A) - Shows output power in watts - Temperature regulation - Keypad for voltage and amperage input Cons: - Keypad for voltage and amperage input (this makes putting precise voltages very easy, but when you want to see when something turns on as you slowly ramp up the voltage, this is not good for that) - Scroll wheel is not sensitive (this makes changing precise voltage and amperage very easy, but when you want to go to a much higher or lower value, this is not sensitive enough, so it requires a lot of turning to get to that higher value). - The build process although being relatively easy had some parts that were unnecessarily tedious, and it seems like those parts weren't thought out enough. I'm pretty sure this issue will be fixed in a later release of the product; when I got my unit, it had just come out. Final Thoughts: Overall, I think this is a great option for people looking for an accurate and high power power supply. I think the process of building the power supply is quite beneficial because you can choose how much power you want (by picking a different power supply), and you can see how the power supply is assembled so if it ever needs repair you can easily do that. My rating for this power supply would be 4/5, because of all the useful features and the ease of use.
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In many of my projects, I require a rechargeable battery that can put out more than 3 amps, and have a pretty high capacity to weight ratio. One of the many batteries that meet these requirements are called 18650 Li-Ion batteries. You can find them in old laptop batteries, charge them up with a special charger, and use them. Also, you can solder or spot weld them together to make large battery packs for e-bikes, backup batteries, and more. In this tutorial, I will be showing you how to extract the 18650's from an old laptop battery, and how to charge them up.The first step is to get an old laptop battery (you can find them in the battery bin of your local hardware store). Any laptop battery will work, as long it has Li-Ion batteries (it usually says somewhere on the laptop battery).The second step is to open the laptop battery casing. You can do this by finding an opening in the casing, and wedging a flat-head screwdriver (or something similar) in the opening, and prying the case open.Once you have the casing open, the batteries (which are connected by nickel strips) should fall out.Then, you can cut the nickel strips which are attaching the batteries to the BMS (battery management system).After that, you can separate the individual batteries from each other, by taking the nickel strips off the positive and negative terminals of the battery. Try to not leave any nickel strip on the positive and negative ends of the battery, but a little bit is fine.Test each battery (with a multimeter) to see if they are good. Anything above one volt is fine, but above three volts is better.Now, once you have separated and tested each battery, you should have 6 individual 18650 batteries, ready for charging!Now, you can put the 18650's in your charger. The charger I am using is an Efest Luc Blu 6, but the reason I got it was because someone was selling it for super cheap, and they don't make them any more. The charger I would recommend is the Litokala Lii-500, because you can monitor the battery voltage and charging voltage, and you can also measure the capacity and internal resistance of the batteries.This charger shows the battery voltage, and the charging voltage. You can also connect it to your phone (with Bluetooth to monitor the charging process of all the batteries when you are in another room. If you can get one of these for $15 or less, I would recommend it.Once the charging process is complete, you have a very useful Li-Ion battery that you can using in many different projects!I have finished the DIY Li-Po drill battery! The drill now has much more power, and it lasts for much longer. When I was testing this earlier (and the wires heated up red hot), I thought is was because the wire gauge was too small, but the real reason was that the positive and negative wires touched, and caused a short. Because the battery was larger than the original battery, I had to duct tape the top piece onto the main housing. Not aesthetically pleasing, but functional and cheap (the entire conversion cost only $8!)I wanted to test the drill battery without the top cover on, by connecting the drill to the output of the BMS with alligator clips. When I started testing the drill (it works great and has much more torque) the alligator clips were fine, and only a little bit warm. Then after about 30 seconds, suddenly, the alligator clips started glowing red hot, melting the insulation of the wire, producing some white smoke. I don't know why this happened, because the drill was off when the clips started glowing. I will test this again, but with a thicker wire gauge, and see what happens.My old Ni-Cad Black and Decker drill had really bad battery life, and I didn't want to spend the money to buy a new Li-Ion drill. I ended up using some Li-Po batteries that I had salvaged, connected in series to make a voltage of 12V (the voltage of the original battery). This should make the drill much more powerful (because the Li-Po's can output about 20 amps) and it should last much longer (the new battery has 4 times the capacity of the old one). My goal was making the battery cheap, and I seemed to have succeeded in that aspect of the battery. The Li-Po batteries were free (salvaged) the BMS (battery management system) was $3 (from eBay), the voltage monitor (on the front of the battery was also $3 (again, from eBay), and the switch was $2 (from my local electronics store). That brings the total cost to $8! I have not finished the battery yet (I still need to modify the old charger and put the top cover back on). I will make a post once I am done the battery!I ended up mounting the panel on the roof (I learned how from a YouTube video, and I added another battery and an inverter to my super simple solar system! Now, because I wired the batteries in parallel, I have 230Ah of capacity. The inverter (brand new from my local classifieds) is 400W, so that means I can run low-power items off of it in my garage. I have ordered a watt and voltage meter off of eBay, so I can measure the amount of watt hours I have generated, and the voltage of the solar panel (the charge controller doesn't show this information). I might upgrade the system in the near future with an MPPT charge controller and a bigger battery bank.These are some photos of my super simple solar system. It includes one 350W solar panel, a solar charge controller, and a 115Ah deep cycle flood battery. I plan on adding an inverter and another battery (in parallel) later, and even possibly mounting the panel on the roof. The panel cost $40 (I got it used but in basically brand new condition from a university), the charge controller cost $10 (from eBay), and I already had the battery. That makes the total cost of the system $50! |
AuthorI am a beginner electronics hobbyist, and I like to fiddle with electronics and build cool things. |